What to Make of Oracle vs. Red Hat?

The tremors from Oracle's recent decision to support its own version of Red Hat Linux less expensively than Red Hat does are still being felt in the Linux community, and both analysts and Linux corporate executives are trying to get a handle on it.

The tremors from Oracle's recent decision to support its own version of Red Hat Linux less expensively than Red Hat does are still being felt in the Linux community.

Red Hat's official statement is, "The opportunity for open source just got bigger. Oracle's announcement further validates Red Hat's technical leadership. We will continue to optimize Red Hat Enterprise Linux for Oracle and compete on value and innovation."

On Red Hat's site, though, the Linux company comes out swinging. In a section titled "Unfakeable Linux," Red Hat points out a laundry list of what's wrong with Oracle's Unbreakable Linux. This includes no support for the Red Hat Application Stack; no guarantees of hardware or software compatibility; and, invoking that swear word in Linux circles, Oracle will "fork" the RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) code.

Does Red Hat have reason to take this so seriously? After seeing its stock get slammed by almost 24 percent in the first full day since Oracle's announcement, it's easy to see why the company is already making a fight out of it.

On the other hand, Kevin Carmony, Linspire's CEO, thinks the market is overreacting to Oracle's move. After all, Carmony said, "since when has Oracle been interested in saving IT departments' money? Since when has Oracle been known for offering quality support? This news is a bit like Hershey's saying they are going into the health food business. Buyer beware."

Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols is editor of eWEEK.com's Linux & Open Source Center and Ziff Davis Channel Zone. Prior to becoming a technology journalist, Vaughan-Nichols worked at NASA and the Department of Defense on numerous major technological projects. Since then, he's focused on covering the technology and business issues that make a real difference to the people in the industry.